Alastair shrugged. "One doctor said he thought mine must've been in rags and rather than let me go about naked, some kind soul took this infantry sergeant's uniform and put it on me."
Griff indicated the short sleeves. "Guess we don't have too many infantrymen with arms as long as yours."
Alastair grinned. "My boots are too small and yes, if I took them off now, you'd see how short my trousers are too."
"What a nightmare. Not you. But what happened to you. To all the wounded. Dead."
"You cannot imagine how hideous it was, Griff. No one has good records in our field hospitals of who's there. One surgeon for hundreds of wounded. Volunteers from the villages to do the nursing? A problem, that."
"Why didn't you speak up, tell them you weren't infantry and—”
Alastair shook his head weary of his journey and this story. "I would have if I could have. But it seems, I didn't speak for months."
"What?"
He tried not to be bitter. "I didn't know anyone for the longest time."
"What do you mean?"
"I didn't even know myself. Not my name, my rank. Even my country. The men I was with told me I was English. That I spoke gibberish, but they were English words. They'd picked me off the field because they heard me crying for help."And Bee."They threw me in the wagon."
"How is that possible? Not to know yourself?" Griff asked. "You had your uniform?"
"Evidently not."
"But why? Rifle shot doesn't blow off your uniform or—”
"No. Scavengers steal it." He shook his head. "But you must know how hideous it was."
Griff scowled. "We've had reports. The animals—”
"Animals?" Alastair scoffed. "Is that what you heard? Maybe you'd call the creatures who came to rob the wounded and the dead that, but from the stories I've heard from those brought in from the field, I'd call them devils."
"Men?"
"Women. Children, too. Came to kick and prod the wounded and the lifeless. Those who couldn't fight? Those too weak to resist? Those heathens robbed them. Cut their buttons from their uniforms. Took their shakos. Their coats, shoes, sabres, pistols. Even the trinkets from their pockets. A few cut the gold fillings from the mouths of the dead. Left those still breathing, whimpering and sobbing, naked to the mercies of the night, the stars and God."
"Dear Lord."
"I assure you, He did not walk battlefields. But next time—”
Griff grew stern, angry. "There'll be no next time, Alastair."
"I hope to heaven you're right, Griff. Because the next time men slaughter men, you'd better have enough surgeons, even enough wagons to carry the wounded away and try to save them. You'd better have guards, too, from what I've heard of those who suffered these thieves, lots of guards who patrol the fields and preserve the final dignity of those who fought and fell."
Griff stared at his folded hands, but his mouth went rigid. "We had your name on one of the rolls of wounded. Then there was nothing. No record of where you were."
"The infantryman who was beside me in the cart died. Or so said one of the women who nursed us. And she did not know my name. Whatever happened to the rolls with my name on them, I have no idea."
"We thought you were dead. But we had no evidence. So we assumed...the worst. Thoseinyour regiment who survived the day told us of a series of rockets that the French line rained on your position. Nine of your men are dead."
"I'm not surprised."
"You don't remember?"
Alastair shrugged. "Not a thing. I remember the start of the battle, the charge, the pounding of hooves, but then...nothing. When I came to awareness again, I was in a wooden barn with other wounded. Hundreds. Bleeding, crying, dying. I was with men whose uniforms I didn't understand. My mind was blank. Without an idea of where I was or what I was doing with all these mangled, moaning men, I couldn't recall anything. I asked what I was doing there, or I guess I did. The doctor told me it was August. I'd lost weeks, a month or more. I had no name, no past, no rank, no future. But I did speak English."
"You didn't know who you were?" Griff asked in horror.
